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In fact, the general’s new job is everything but
straightforward. He has taken on a task that is likely to require diplomatic
tap dancing if he is to succeed in putting flesh on the alliance’s skeleton and
ensure that his native Pakistan is not enmeshed in the bitter dispute between
Saudi Arabia, one of Pakistan’s closest allies, and Iran, the South Asian
state’s neighbour.

Complicating things for General Sharif is the fact that
Pakistan is home to the world’s largest Shiite Muslim minority, who account for
up to a quarter of its population. Pakistani
critics warned that General Sharif’s appointment risked involving Pakistan
not only in the Middle East’s seemingly intractable conflicts, but also in
Sunni-Shiite Muslim sectarian strife.

General Sharif’s appointment of what is officially the
Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism, dubbed the Muslim world’s NATO, promises
to give the group credibility it needs: a non-Arab commander from one of
the world’s most populous Muslim countries who commanded not only one of the
Muslim world’s largest militaries, but also one that possesses nuclear weapons.

Yet, General Sharif’s problems start with the alliance’s
name. The alliance, announced hastily by Saudi Arabia two years ago without
prior consultations with all of its alleged members, has yet to adopt a common
definition of what constitutes terrorism.

Members also have yet to reach agreement on what the
alliance’s priorities are: Iran, viewed by Saudi Arabia as the foremost threat,
or jihadist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Many members, including
Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, are moreover weary of being roped into Saudi
Arabia’s war in Yemen that has allowed Al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to emerge stronger than ever.

Pakistan’s parliament rejected
in 2015 a Saudi request to contribute troops to the war in Yemen. More
recently, on the eve of General Sharif’s appointment, Pakistan agreed to send
10,000 combat troops to the Saudi side of the kingdom’s border with Yemen.

Pakistan has sought to deflect criticism that it was
ignoring parliament’s rejection by reaching out to Iran. General Raheel has
reportedly told his Saudi counterparts that he would seek to involve Iran in
the alliance. Similarly, General Sharif’s successor, General Qamar Javed Bajwa,
appeared to be hedging his bets by
declaring that “enhanced Pakistan-Iran military-to-military
cooperation will have a positive impact on regional peace and stability.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir seemed to dispel any
notion of cooperation, let alone reconciliation with Iran in a speech
in February in which he charged that “Iran remains the biggest state sponsor of
terrorism in the world. Iran has as part of its constitution the principle of
exporting the revolution. Iran does not believe in the principle of
citizenship. It believes that the Shiite, the ‘dispossessed’, as Iran calls
them, all belong to Iran and not to their countries of origin. And this is
unacceptable for us in the kingdom, for our allies in the Gulf and for any
country in the world.”

Mr. Al-Jubeir stipulated that “until and unless Iran changes
its behaviour, and changes its outlook, and changes the principles upon which
the Iranian state is based, it will be very difficult to deal with a country
like this.”

However, it may, ironically, be the rise of President Donald
J. Trump that will provide substance to Pakistani efforts to capitalize on the
appointment of General Sharif and Pakistan’s dispatch of troops to bridge the
gap between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has wholeheartedly endorsed Mr. Trump because
of his tough stance towards Iran and wants to be seen to be responding to the
president’s insistence that US allies shoulder more of the burden of their
defence. Iran has long called for talks with Saudi Arabia.

Recent overtures by Kuwait to mediate between the two regional
powers have raised hopes that an arrangement may be possible despite the
kingdom’s tough stance. Kuwaiti foreign minister Sabah Khalid Al Sabah
travelled to Tehran in January to discuss ways of initiating a dialogue between
Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Iranian president Hassan Rohani responded weeks later with a
visit
to Kuwait and Oman. Oman has long had close relations with Iran, mediated
in various disputes involving the Islamic republic, and facilitated US-Iranian
negotiations that resulted two years ago in the nuclear agreement with Iran and
the lifting of international sanctions. Mr. Rohani also earlier this month sent
a letter to Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad Al Sabah regarding efforts to tone down
animosity with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia and Iran recently reached agreement on the
participation of Iranian pilgrims in the haj, the Muslim pilgrimage to the holy
city of Mecca. The two countries failed to agree last year, preventing Iranian
Muslim from fulfilling what is a key religious obligation.

Mr. Al-Jubeir, moreover, made a surprise
visit last month to Iraq, widely seen as a gesture towards Iran. Led by a
predominantly Shiite Muslim government, Iraq is closely aligned with Iran. Iran
supports the government in its fight against the Islamic State (IS) and
sponsors powerful Shiite militias that fight alongside Iraqi troops. As a
result, relations between Saudi Arabia and Iraq have long been strained.

Writing
in Al-Monitor, former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian
suggested that a 1988 United Nations Security Council resolution could serve as
a basis for a Saudi-Iranian arrangement. The resolution which in ended the
Iran-Iraq war in which Saudi Arabia co-funded the Iraqi effort to roll back the
Islamic revolution called for regional collective security arrangements. That
may be a tall order with Iran unlikely to back off its support for Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah militia, or the Houthis in Yemen.

“For a new era to dawn in Iranian-GCC relations, the two
sides have to be able to express their concerns to each other in a constructive
way and translate dialogue into tangible diplomatic gains. They can look to
Europe for examples on how to resolve historic rivalries and how the Peace of
Westphalia or systems such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe and the European Union came to be,” Mr. Mousavian said.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Turkish soccer executives campaigned this month for major
constitutional change that would grant President Recep Tayyip Erdogan far
reaching executive powers. The Turkish Football Federation’s (TFF) backing of
Mr. Erdogan’s effort to accumulate more power put to bed any notion of a
separation between politics and soccer. So did the failure of world soccer body
FIFA and UEFA, its European affiliate, to condemn the TFF’s violation of a cardinal
principle of international sports governance.

Speaking at a TFF
conference, Mr. Erdogan punctured the fiction upheld by sports officials
and politicians of a Chinese Wall that separates sports and politics. “I
believe politics and football share many common aspects at the core. Just like
sports, the essence of politics is competition, race... Just as a team, playing
without any plan, tactic or strategy, have zero chance of winning the cup,
politicians, political parties that have nothing to tell the people have no
chance of success. Just like football, politics cannot be done without passion,
love and dedication. You have to dedicate yourself,” Mr. Erdogan said.

If Mr. Erdogan set the ball up, TFF
president Yildirim Demiroren, a businessman who built his fortune in liquid
gas distribution, sealed the goal by campaigning for a vote in favour of
enhancing the president’s power in a referendum scheduled for April 16. .
Speaking at the same conference, Mr. Demiroren expressed the hope that Turkey
would wake up on the morning of April 17 to discover that a majority of Turks
had voted yes.

Turkish soccer’s partisan alignment with politics with no
sanctioning by international and regional sports associations responsible for
policing maintenance of the fiction of separation of politics and sports goes
however further than simple endorsements. It involves sanctioning soccer
officials, players, and club members for holding potentially dissenting
political views.

Cumhurriyet,
one of Turkey’s few remaining independent newspapers, reported last week that
the TFF had suspended a referee in the Black Sea town of Sinop for publicly
calling for a no vote in the referendum. The referee, Ilker Sahin, charged that
the TFF was applying double standards by de factor stipulating that campaigning
in favour of a yes vote was legitimate, campaigning against was not.

Similarly, Istanbul-based Galatasaray
FC, one of Turkey’s leading clubs, scrambled last week to expel two
prominent former players, Hakan Suker and Arif Erdem, hours after sports and
youth minister Akif Cagatay Kilic, took the club to task for not already having
done so.

Galatasaray had voted a day earlier not to include Messrs
Sukur, Turkey’s all-time top scorer, and Erdem in the expulsion of alleged followers
of Fethullah Gulen, an exiled Muslim preacher, whom Mr. Erdogan blames for last
year’s failed military coup. Those expelled included former provincial
governors and prosecutors.

Messrs. Sukur and Erdem were members of the Galatasary squad
that won the UEFA Cup in 2000. Mr. Sukur, like Mr. Gulen, has sought refuge in
the United States from where both men condemned the failed military attempt to
topple Mr. Erdogan.

A former recruiter for the Gulen movement, Said
Alpsoy, who successfully focused on winning support for the preacher among
Turkey’s top soccer stars said he had recruited half of Galatasaray’s team by the
time he broke with the group in 2003.

US President Donald J. Trump’s short-lived national security
advisor, Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, reportedly discussed while in office
with senior Turkish government officials ways
of extraditing Mr. Gulen to Turkey without going through the U.S.
extradition legal process.

"Traitors to our country and our state have no business
in our established sports clubs. The board's voting is inexplicable to the
families of our martyrs and veterans," Mr.
Kilic said.

Heavily indebted clubs like Galatasary cannot afford to
cross Mr. Erdogan who prides himself on having engineered financial relief for
various clubs, partly through tax amnesties. UEFA
executive Andrea Traverso noted that Turkey is the only member of the European
association where debts and liabilities outstrip clubs’ assets.

Turkish soccer also owes Mr. Erdogan for protecting clubs
from the potentially devastating fallout of the worst
match-fixing scandal in Turkish history. The scandal in 2011 was the first
public skirmish between Messrs. Erdogan and Gulen, who until then had been
allies, particularly in successfully asserting civilian control of the armed
forces. Aziz Yildirim, the head of Fenerbahce SK, the political crown jewel of
Turkish soccer, who was at the core of the scandal, has accused Mr. Gulen’s
followers of engineering the scandal.

The financial troubles of Turkish clubs are aggravated by a severe
drop in match attendance following the introduction of a mandatory electronic
ticketing system in 2013. Fans have boycotted
the system in the belief that it was designed to identify them as part of a
crackdown on popular, politicized fan groups. Soccer fans played an important
role in mass anti-Erdogan protests in 2013, the largest since Mr. Erdogan first
became prime minister a decade earlier.

For his part, Mr. Erdogan outlawed Mr. Gulen’s Hizmet movement
as a terrorist organization in the wake of the failed coup. Critics of Mr.
Erdogan have questioned his assertion and accused him of exploiting the coup to
label most of his critics as Gulenists and act against them.

German intelligence chief Bruno Kahl told Der
Spiegel earlier this month that Turkey had been unable to convince Germany
of Mr. Gulen’s guilt. “Turkey has tried to convince us on a number of different
levels. But they haven't yet been successful,” Mr. Kahl said.

A former soccer player, Mr. Erdogan has sought to enhance
his popularity in soccer-crazy Turkey in advance of the referendum by publicly
identifying himself with the sport. The president was among the first
to congratulate the Turkish national team on the pitch in Ankara for its
defeat of Finland in a World Cup qualifier.

In doing so, Mr. Erdogan is in good company. Many world
leaders see identification with a popular sports team as way to enhance their
own popularity. Congratulations are, however, a far cry from turning soccer
into a willing political tool. It raises questions about where the dividing
line is in the alleged separation of sports and politics as well as about the
integrity of international sports governance.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

US President Donald J. Trump’s vow to defeat what he terms
radical Islamic terrorism forces the United States to manoeuvre the Middle East
and North Africa’s murky world of ever shifting alliances and labyrinth of
power struggles within power struggles.

The pitfalls are complex and multiple. They range from
differences within the 68-member, anti-Islamic State (IS) alliance over what
constitutes terrorism to diverging political priorities to varying degrees of
willingness to tacitly employ jihadists to pursue geopolitical goals. The pitfalls
are most evident in Yemen and Syria and involve two long-standing US allies, NATO
ally Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

US
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson travels to Turkey this week as US and
Russian troops create
separate buffers in Syria to prevent a Turkish assault on the northern town
of Manbij. Manbij, located 40 kilometres from the Turkish border, is controlled
by Kurdish forces, viewed by the US as a key ground force in the fight with the
Islamic State.

Until a series of devastating IS suicide bombings in Turkish
cities, Turkish forces appeared to concentrate on weakening the Kurds rather
than the jihadists in Syria. Stepped-up Turkish action against IS has not
weakened Turkey’s resolve to prevent Kurds from emerging as one of the victors
in the Syrian conflict.

At the heart of US-Turkish differences over the Kurds is the
age-old-adage that one man’s terrorist is another man’s liberation fighter. The
US has a long history of empathy towards Kurdish cultural and national rights
and enabled the emergence of a Kurdish state in waiting in northern Iraq. The
differences also go to an equally large elephant in the room: the question
whether Syria, Yemen and Iraq will survive as nation states in a post-war era.

That may be the real issue at the core of US-Turkish
differences. Many Turks hark back in
their suspicion that foreign powers are bent on breaking up the Turkish state to
the 1920 Treaty of Sevre that called for a referendum in which Kurds would
determine their future.

Visionary Mustafa Kemal Ataturk carved modern Turkey out of
the ruins of the Ottoman empire. He mandated a unified Turkish identity that superseded
identities of a nation whose population was to a large degree made up of refugees
from far flung parts of the former empire and ethnic and religious minorities.

Turkey charges that Syrian Kurdish fighters are aligned with
the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish Kurdish group that has been fighting
for Kurdish rights for more than three decades and has been designated
terrorist by Turkey, the United States and Europe.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, Russian
Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Turkey’s Chief of the General
Staff Hulusi Abkar met in the southern Turkish city of Antalya in advance of Mr.
Tillerson’s visit to lower tensions that threaten planned efforts to capture
Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital.

In many ways, the pitfalls are similar in Yemen, where Mr.
Trump has stepped up support for Saudi Arabia’s devastating intervention that
this month entered its third year and has increased attacks on Al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) viewed as one of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliates.

It took Al Qaeda attacks inside the kingdom in 2003-4 and jihadist
operations since as well as growing international suggestions of an ideological
affinity between Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism and jihadism
for the kingdom to view Islamic militants on par with Iran, which Saudis see as
an existential threat.

Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia, despite a litany of denials, has
seen militant Islamists as useful tools in its proxy wars with Iran in Iraq,
Syria and Yemen. Sunni ultra-conservatives are frequently at the forefront of
Saudi-led efforts to dislodge the Yemeni Houthis from their strongholds.

Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen has in fact given AQAP
a new lease on life. Prior to the war, AQAP had been driven to near irrelevance
by the rise of IS and security crackdowns. In a report
in February, the International Crisis Group (ICG) concluded that AQAP was “stronger
than it has ever been.”

The group “appears ever more embedded in the fabric of
opposition to the Houthi/Saleh alliance …that is fighting the internationally
recognised, Saudi-backed interim government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi,”
the report said. It was referring to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who are
aligned with former Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.

AQAP’s resurgence is as much a result of Saudi Arabia’s
single-minded focus on the Iranian threat posed in the kingdom’s perception by
the Houthis as it is potentially related to a murky web of indirect or tacit
relationships with the group.

“In prosecuting the war, the Saudi-led coalition has
relegated confronting AQAP and IS to a second-tier priority… Saudi-led
coalition statements that fighting the group is a top priority and
announcements of military victories against AQAP in the south are belied by
events,” the ICG said.

The kingdom’s willingness to cooperate with Islamists such
as Yemen’s Islah party, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, and unclear attitude
towards AQAP has sparked strains within the anti-Houthi coalition, particularly
with the staunchly anti-Islamist UAE.

AQAP has been able to rearm itself through the indirect acquisition
of weapons from the Saudi-led coalition as well as raids on Yemeni military
camps. AQAP is believed to have received advance notice and to have coordinated
with the Saudis its withdrawal from the crucial port of Mukalla before an assault
by UAE and Yemeni forces, according to the ICG.

Saudi Arabia was conspicuously low key when in January a US Navy
Seal died in a raid on AQAP in which the US military seized
information that this month prompted the Trump administration and Britain
to ban carry-on electronics aboard U.S. and London-bound flights from select
airports in North Africa and the Middle East, including two in Saudi Arabia.

Arab
News, Saudi Arabia’s leading English-language newspaper, this week quoted
Saudi officials as saying that AQAP, widely believed to be well advanced in its
ability to target aircraft with explosives smuggled on board, had lost its capability
to operate overseas.

The officials said that Saudi Arabia, which has cozied up to
the Trump administration and endorsed the president’s ban on travel to the US
from six Muslim majority countries, was concerned about IS and Shiite militants
rather than AQAP. “They (AQAP) don’t have the power to export their
activities,” Arab news quoted Abdullah Al-Shehri, a senior Saudi interior
ministry official, as saying.

The ministry’s spokesman, Mansour Al-Turki, noted that ´ “Qaeda
actually has not been involved in any real kind of terrorism-related incident
in Saudi Arabia for three years. Most of the incidents came from Daesh (the
Arab acronym for IS) or militant groups related to Shiites in the eastern
province.”

The United States and some of its key allies, including
Turkey and Saudi Arabia, may be able to paper over differences that allow for
short-term advances against IS. But in the longer term, it could be the failure
to address those differences head on that will create new breeding grounds for
militancy. It’s the kind of trade-off that in the past has produced short-term
results only to create even greater problems down the road.

Friday, March 24, 2017

Israel and Palestine are gearing up for a crucial battle in
world soccer body FIFA about the status of Israeli-occupied territory that is
likely to foreshadow President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to revive long-stalled
Middle East peace efforts.

At stake in the battle that will play out during FIFA’s
annual congress in May in Bahrain is the status of six West Bank Israeli
settlement teams that play in Israeli leagues. The Palestine Football Association
(PFA) and human rights groups charge that the Israel Football Association’s
(IFA) policy violates FIFA rules as well as international law that sees Israeli
settlements as illegal.

Past efforts by the PFA to get Israel’s FIFA membership
suspended have stranded, prompting years of failed efforts by the world soccer
body to negotiate a solution. FIFA negotiator Tokyo Sexwale, whose mandate ends
in May, all but declared failure in a report submitted this week to the world
body.

Mr. Sexwale proposed three options in a last-ditch effort,
all of which are unlikely to provide relief, sources said. Mr. Sexwale reportedly
suggested that FIFA could take the legal risk of throwing in the towel, give
Israel six months to rectify the status of the disputed clubs, or continue to attempt
to achieve a negotiated solution.

Accepting the status quo would revive efforts by the PFA and
human rights groups to lobby for a sufficient majority to suspend Israel’s
membership at the forthcoming congress. A suspension would complicate Mr. Trump’s
Middle East peace efforts.

It would put Arab states, particularly those in the Gulf, in
a bind. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have a vested interest in the Trump
administration’s tougher attitude towards Iran. Gulf-backed bi-partisan draft
legislation that would tighten US sanctions against Iran is pending in the US
Congress.

Gulf states as well as Egypt have backed Mr. Trump’s peace-making
efforts. Mr. Trump called during last month’s visit to Washington by Israeli
prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu for a halt to expansion of West Bank and
Jerusalem settlements despite adopting an overall far more pro-Israeli attitude
than past administrations. The president has also invited Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas to visit Washington in the near future.

Egyptian security last month barred PFA president and
Palestinian sports czar Jibril Rajoub entry to Egypt to attend a
counter-terrorism conference. Mr. Rajoub, a close associate of Mr. Abbas, is
widely seen as a possible future Palestinian president.

The PFA and Human Rights Watch have argued that granting
West Bank settlement teams the right to play in Israeli leagues violates United
Nations Security Council resolutions, including last’s December’s condemnation
of Israeli settlements, as well as the Fourth Geneva Convention that sets rules
for administering occupied territory.

They also argue that tolerating the status quo would contradict
FIFA’s adoption of United
Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Finally,
the PFA and Human Rights Watch note that FIFA statutes prohibit a member
association from holding games on the territory of another member association
without permission. FIFA’s European affiliate, UEFA, blocked Russia from
incorporating teams from occupied Crimea in its national league competitions on
those grounds

Giving
Israel six months to rectify the situation could offer a temporary, face-saving
compromise. By implication, it would acknowledge that allowing West Bank teams
to play in Israeli leagues constitutes a violation.

While
Israel is certain to reject the notion, it would buy it time at a moment that
countering the growing Boycott, Diversification and Sanctions (BDS) movement
that seeks to penalize Israel for continued occupation of the West Bank has
become a priority. Israel recently emulated Mr. Trump’s disputed ban on travel
to the United States from six majority Muslim country. It declared a ban on
travel to Israel by BDS supporters.

It would
also allow Arab and Gulf states to give Mr. Trump’s peace-making efforts a
chance. Suspension of Israel by FIFA would constitute a major Palestinian
victory in long-standing efforts to isolate Israel in international
organizations.

Buying into
Mr. Sexwale’s proposal for a six-month period is a risky undertaking for all.
Mr. Rajoub was criticized for his dropping last year of a proposal to suspend
Israel after he realized that he could not muster a quorum in the FIFA
congress. Ultra-nationalists in Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet who advocate annexation
of the West Bank would no doubt reject the compromise.

Extending
negotiations essentially kicks the ball down the road at a time that Israel is
emboldened by Mr. Trump’s pro-Israeli and anti-Muslim stance while Palestinians
are going through the motions with little confidence that peace-making will
produce tangible results. There is little reason to assume that negotiations
would succeed where they have failed without real progress in overall
peace-making.

The world
soccer body is, nonetheless, likely to opt for the road of least resistance,
extending negotiations, despite growing criticism of Israel among FIFA members.
PFA vice chairwoman told the Jerusalem Post that Mr. Sexwale’s FIFA monitoring
committee would hold a last-ditch meeting in early May in advance of the FIFA
congress.

Mr. Rajoub told
Al Jazeera that failure to resolve the issue would leave the PFA with “no other
choice: we will go to the congress next May in Bahrain and ask for the
imposition of sanctions against the Israeli federation.”

The PFA
would be bolstered in its effort by the fact that Bahrain, it’s image already
tarnished by human rights violations, may want to avoid the embarrassment of
having hosted a group that fails to support Palestinian claims.

FIFA could
be vulnerable to legal action that would complicate Israeli efforts to avert
suspension if the group opts for maintaining the status quo or fails to extend
negotiations.

Irrespective
of which way FIFA decides to proceed, Israel will be fighting a backbench
battle in FIFA as well as other international organizations as long as the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved.

Counting on
US backing could prove to be a slippery slope with the Trump administration
losing leverage and credibility as it plans cutbacks in financial support for
the United Nations as well as the State Department, the US’s key diplomatic
agency.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Thousands of Iranian Arabs last week attended
an AFC Champions League soccer match between Esteghlal Ahvaz FC and Qatar’s Lekhwiya
SC dressed in traditional Arab garb in
protest what an opposition news website dubbed were government efforts to
suppress their identity.

The English-language website, Ahwaz Monitor, said support for
Esteghlal turned into anti-government protests with fans cheering their team in
Arabic rather than Farsi. Fans chanted “national slogans” such as “Arabic is my
identity and honour” and “Al Ahwaz for Ahwazis and all Gulf state residents are
dearest to us.” Fans reportedly recited poetry celebrating their region’s Arab
heritage.

Al Ahwaz is the Arabic name for the oil-rich
but impoverished, south-eastern Iranian province of Khuzestan that borders on
Iraq and sits at the head of the Gulf. It is also the name of the province’s
capital that hosts Iran’s foremost refinery. Part of Khuzestan’s ethnic and religious
mosaic, ethnic Arabs are believed to account for at least one third of its 3.7
million inhabitants. Iranian Arabs put the figure much higher.

Ahwaz Monitor started operations last summer,
providing regular reports on Iranian Arabs and government efforts to suppress
their identity and deprive them of their rights. It’s not clear who funds or
owns the website.

Eruptions of genuine discontent in Khuzestan,
particularly on soccer pitches when Asian competition matches are played
against teams from the Gulf, have become a fixture in a province that for
decades has been an overt and covert battlefield in the struggle between Saudi
Arabia and Iran for regional hegemony.

Protests have focussed on identity,
environmental degradation, and social issues. Iranian politicians warned of a “national
threat” in February when riots
erupted in 11 cities in Khuzestan after they lost power during a severe
dust storm. The outages led to water shortages as water and wastewater
treatment plants were knocked offline. Demonstrators chanted "Death to
tyranny", "We, the people of Ahwaz, won't accept oppression" and
"Clean air is our right, Ahwaz is our city."

International human rights groups have long
accused Iran of discriminating against Iranian Arabs even though many are
Shiites rather than Sunni Muslims. Dozens
of protesters were reportedly killed during demonstrations in Ahwaz in 2011
that were inspired by the popular Arab revolts.

“Despite Khuzestan's natural resource wealth,
its ethnic Arab population, which is believed to constitute a majority in the
province, has long complained about the lack of socio-economic development in
the region. They also allege that the Iranian government has engaged in
systematic discrimination against them, particularly in the areas of
employment, housing, and civil and political rights,” Human
Rights Watch said at the time.

Habib Jaber Al-Ahvazi, a spokesman for the
Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), a group that
demands independence for Ahvaz and is believed to be responsible for bomb
attacks in the city in 2005, 2006 and 2013, told online Arab nationalist Ahvaz.tv in 2015 that soccer protests were part of an “ongoing confrontation between demonstrators and the
forces of the Persian occupation.”

There is little doubt that discontent in
Khuzestan is widespread and that repeated spontaneous protests in stadiums as
well as on the streets of the province’s cities were genuine. Yet, determining
what events and reporting is purely local and what elements may be linked to
potential Saudi and Gulf attempts to destabilize Iran is difficult.

Equally, there is little doubt that Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf Arabs have a long history of encouraging Iranian Arab
opposition and troubling the minority’s relations with the government.

Iranian Arabs believe that the government
fears that they are susceptible to foreign Arab influence. That suspicion,
Iranian Arabs say, is rooted in Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s bloody eight-year
war against Iran that ended in 1988. Saddam falsely expected that Iranian Arabs
would welcome the opportunity to gain independence from Iran.

The Iranian Arab refusal to side with Saddam
failed, however, to earn Arabs in Ahwaz the credit they deserved. Government
suspicions have been fuelled by recent conversions to Sunni Islam of a number
of Iranian Arabs.

Distrust is further fuelled by the fact that
much opposition news in Khuzestan is generated by organizations associated with
the exiled People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran or Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a
militant left-wing group that advocates the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic regime
and traces its roots to resistance against the shah who was toppled in the 1979
revolution.

The Mujahedin based themselves in Iraq during
the Saudi-backed Iraqi war against Iran. More recently the group appears to
enjoy increased support from the kingdom. In a clear demonstration of Saudi
support, former Saudi intelligence chief and envoy to Britain and the United
States, Prince
Turki al-Faisal, told a Mujahedeen rally in Paris last year that "your
legitimate struggle against the (Iranian) regime will achieve its goal, sooner
or later. I, too, want the fall of the regime.”

Prince Turki’s remarks fit a pattern of Arab
calls for independence of Khuzestan. Writing in 2012 in Asharq Al Awsat, a
Saudi newspaper, Amal Al-Hazzani, an academic who has since been dropped from
the paper’s roster after she wrote positively about Israel, asserted in an
op-ed entitled “The oppressed Arab district of al-Ahwaz“ that “the
al-Ahwaz district in Iran...is an Arab territory... Its Arab residents have
been facing continual repression ever since the Persian state assumed control
of the region in 1925... It is imperative that the Arabs take up the al-Ahwaz
cause, at least from the humanitarian perspective.”

The notion that external forces may be
exploiting discontent in Khuzestan has broader implications amid reports that President
Donald J. Trump could revert to a policy of regime change in Iran. Iran has in
the past accused the United States and Saudi Arabia as well as Israel and
Britain of supporting nationalist insurgents in the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

The province borders on the Pakistani region
of Balochistan where nationalists and jihadists have targeted Chinese
investment that is key to China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. Some
analysts have suggested that US and Saudi support for dissidents in various
Iranian provinces may be designed to force Iran to weaken, if not withdraw,
support for the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Pakistani
General
Qamar Javed Bajwa, apparently concerned that potential efforts
to destabilize Iran could aggravate volatility in Balochistan, noted earlier
this month that “enhanced
Pakistan-Iran military-to-military cooperation will have a positive impact on
regional peace and stability.”

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Critics in the Maldives likely sighed relief
when Saudi King Salman this week postponed his
visit because of an outbreak of flu. The flu is however unlikely to halt a planned
massive Saudi investment or the impact on Maldives society of the kingdom’s
religion-driven public diplomacy.

Big ticket investments and countering political
violence dominated the headlines of the
king’s tour of Asia together with the extravagance of his travel – an entourage
of at least 1,000, 459 tonnes of luggage, a golden electric elevator for the
monarch to descend from his private plane, and a specially built toilet for his
visit to a Jakarta mosque.

Yet, religion often was an elephant in the room
on most stops on King Salman’s trip that took him to Malaysia, Indonesia,
Brunei, China and Japan and that was supposed to also include the Maldives.

All countries on the king’s intinerary feel the
impact of a more than four-decade long Saudi soft power effort to spread Sunni
Muslim ultra-conservatism in a bid to counter the potential appeal of Iran,
whose regime came to power in a popular revolt and that in contrast to the
autocratic kingdom recognizes some degree of popular sovereignty.

The Saudi effort, the single largest public
diplomacy campaign in history, has fostered across the Muslim world greater
conservatism, anti-Shiite and anti-Ahmadi sectarianism, intolerance, and a roll
back of basic freedoms through among others tough anti-blasphemy laws.

To be sure, the Saudi campaign is one of several
initiatives by Eurasian powers to assert influence across a swath of land
stretching from Turkey to China. Yet, it is the one with the largest war chest
except for China’s One Belt, One Road initiative.

The Saudi campaign moreover focuses on changing
societies rather than exclusively on economics and security as in the case of
China or Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union. Other powers build their efforts on
ethnic or historic kinship as Turkey does with its neo-Ottomanism or India by
forging closer ties to its Diaspora.

In some countries, such as Malaysia and Brunei,
whose rulers seek legitimacy through greater public piety and association with
Islam, Saudi religious diplomacy is a welcome contribution. In his role as
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, a reference to the Muslim holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, King Salman bestowed with his visit religious legitimacy on
his hosts.

Saudi Arabia’s public diplomacy may also be boosted
by mounting repression in Egypt that threatens
foreign students at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, long the citadel of
Islamic learning. Al Azhar is often viewed as an anti-dote to the
ultra-conservatism of Saudi religious education. Repression in Egypt could,
however, drive students to Saudi institutions instead.

Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh, Malaysia’s minister of
higher education, told reporters in February that his ministry was no
longer giving scholarships for study in Egypt. An estimated 11,000
Malaysians study in the North African country. “Right now, the situation in
Egypt has not fully settled down, our embassy there is still monitoring the
security situation there,” Mr. Idris said.

The risks involved in an embrace of
Saudi-inspired Sunni ultra-conservatism are never far. Decades of Saudi funding
often creates an environment that is not inherently violent in and of itself
but enables breeding grounds for more militant interpretations of the faith
that target not only local environments but also the kingdom itself.

“Saudi oil money has been changing
the religious make-up of Malaysians since the 1970s, but more direct penetration
of Saudis in the religious sphere may change the outlook of ordinary Malaysians
further,” said Malaysia scholar Norshahril Saat in a recent commentary
on King Salman’s visit.

Malaysia detained at least seven suspects in
advance of King Salman’s arrival who allegedly were planning to attack the
monarch. Two months earlier, police
opened an investigation into a Saudi-backed university in Selangor, the International
University of Al-Madinah, after two of its students were detained on suspicion
of being militants.

Established in 2006, the university’s religious teachings
have long been suspected by authorities of promoting extremism. The university
has denied the allegations. But a
top Malaysian counter-terrorism official, Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, said
that efforts to persuade the university to change its syllabi had so far come
to naught.

While symbolism may have worked in favour of the rulers of
Malaysia and Brunei, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo, president of a country that
prides itself on its tolerant version of Islam, appears to have subtly turned the
tables on King Salman. In an effort to portray himself as the leader of all
Indonesian Muslims and to counter growing ultra-conservative influence, Mr.
Widodo employed Javanese cultural concepts of tolerance and dialogue.

Symbolism was evident in differing welcomes of the king in Java
and Bali. Nude statues that dot the botanic gardens at the Presidential Palace
in Bogor, about 40 kilometres outside of Jakarta, were covered
with potted plants to avoid offending the Saudis. Predominantly Hindu Bali
decided to do
nothing of the sort.

In meetings with major Indonesian Islamic organizations,
including Nahdlatul Ulama, a 91-year old, traditionalist movement that has
opposition to Wahhabism, the ultra-conservative strand of Islam that
legitimizes the rule of the Sauds, written into its DNA, King Salman said
Indonesia and his country had agreed to promote a more moderate version of the
faith.

To be sure, King Salman’s predecessor, King Abdullah already
started cautiously reaching out to other strands of Islam as well as other
faiths. Moreover, Vision 2030, the plan to
diversify the Saudi economy and upgrade the kingdom’s autocracy, seeks to
deprive ultra-conservatism in Saudi Arabia of its rough edges and bring it more
in line with the 21st century.

It also seeks to counter militant ideological offspring,
including jihadism, by promoting an interpretation of Islam that dictates
unconditional obedience to the ruler. The problem is that more than four
decades of Saudi support has created a family of worldviews that leads their
own lives, no longer are dependent on Saudi funding, and includes activist
segments critical of the Al Sauds as well as their own rulers.

It’s not clear to what degree ideological reforms King
Salman’s son and deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is introducing in
the kingdom trickle down to Saudi-funded institutions elsewhere. Saudi Arabia
said during King Salman’s visit that it would be opening two
new campuses in Makassar and Medan of its Jakarta-based Islamic and Arabic
College of Indonesia (LIPIA), a branch of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic
University in Riyadh.

Mounting concern about growing ultra-conservatism in China’s
troubled north-western Xinjiang province, home to the Uyghurs, ethnic Turks who
stubbornly seek to preserve their culture and identity as well as among the
Hui, a wholly integrated Muslim community, could complicate relations with
Saudi Arabia.

China and Saudi Arabia trumpeted their strategic relations
during King Salman’s visit, yet Beijing has done little to counter rising
Islamophobia in the media and among Chinese officials.

To lay the groundwork for a $10bn investment that would give
the kingdom control of an Indian Ocean atoll, Saudi Arabia funded religious
institutions in the Maldives and offered scholarships for students to pursue religious
studies at the it’s ultra-conservative universities.

The funding has pushed the Maldives, a popular high-end
tourist destination, towards greater intolerance and public piety. Public
partying, mixed dancing and Western beach garb have become acceptable only
within expensive tourist resorts.

The Saudis “have had a good run of propagating their world
view to the people of the Maldives and they’ve done that for the last three
decades. They’ve now, I think, come to the view that they have enough sympathy
to get a foothold,” said former
Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed said.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Pakistan is emerging as an important military player in the
Gulf as its struggles to balance complex relations with regional rivals Saudi
Arabia and Iran and diverging approaches by different branches of its government.

Pakistan’s military engagement with the Gulf goes far beyond
increased involvement in a Saudi-led, 41-nation military alliance that
officially was established to counter terrorism, but is widely suspected to
also be a bid to garner support for the kingdom’s troubled intervention in
Yemen and create an anti-Iranian Sunni Muslim grouping.

As it discusses the deployment of troops to the Saudi-Yemeni
border and a senior, recently retired Pakistani military commander appears
poised to take command of the Riyadh-based alliance, Pakistan alongside Turkey
and China is also emerging as a more cost-effective supplier of military hardware
to a region that is home to the world’s largest arms importers.

"You can’t afford having these very expensive contracts
with western companies and contractors, so what (the Gulf) will do is go toward
cheaper contractors, so that’s why they are looking towards China, towards
Pakistan, towards Turkey – it’s just the natural move.,” Andreas Krieg, a
professor at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom’s Joint Command and
Staff College, told The
National.

Pakistani engagement in terms of troops may be most advanced
with Saudi Arabia, while Qatar appears focused on cooperation in development
and production of hardware. “Over the last two years the Qataris have really
turned their backs towards the West and looked toward the East, as all the Gulf
countries are doing right now,” Mr. Krieg said.

Qatar is discussing with Turkey and Pakistan joint
production of new defence systems, including Turkey’s T-129 attack and reconnaissance
helicopter. Qatar has also expressed interest in the fifth generation JF-17
fighter jet which Pakistan developed with China. Pakistani pilots of the JF-17
last year demonstrated their skills in a display in Qatar. The Pakistan Ordnance
Factory, moreover, recently opened a marketing and sales office in Dubai.

Similarly, Turkey last year deployed
3,000 ground troops as well as air and naval units, military trainers and
special operations forces to a newly created base in Qatar.

Pakistani engagement in the Middle East has a long and
storied history. It dispatched pilots in 1969 to fly Saudi air force Lightning
jets that repulsed a South Yemeni incursion into the kingdom’s southern border.
In the preceding years, Pakistan had helped the kingdom attempt to build its
first war warplanes and trained Saudi pilots. Pakistani pilots again flew missions during
the 1973 Middle East War in defense of Saudi Arabia’s borders.

Pakistan bolstered its position over the following years with
military missions in 22 countries, training facilities for the region and by
becoming the world’s largest exporter of military personnel. Pakistanis currently
provide training to armed forces in various Gulf countries and thousands serve
in Gulf uniforms in many of the region’s militaries, including entire
battalions of Pakistanis in the Saudi military.

Historically, Pakistan’s largest contingent of 20,000
soldier was initially based
in the 1970s in the triangle where the borders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and
Israel bump up against each other. Pakistani combat troops were also dispatched
to the kingdom after a group of religious Saudi militants attacked the Grand
Mosque in Mecca in 1979.

More Pakistani troops were dispatched in 1990 to ostensibly
protect the Muslim holy cities in the kingdom as part of the Pakistani
military’s circumvention of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s inclination to
include a Pakistani contingent in the US-led coalition assembled to roll back
the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.

Ironically it is Mr. Sharif who 25 years later appears to be
circumventing. This time it would be to circumvent a refusal by parliament in
2015 to contribute troops to the Saudi war in Yemen despite Pakistan being the world’s
foremost beneficiary of Saudi largesse and its dependency on remittances

Ironically, Mr. Sharif’s willingness in 2015 to comply with
the Saudi request was opposed by Pakistani corps commanders, including Lieutenant
General Qamar Javed Bajwa. That was before General Bajwa succeeded General
Raheel Sharif (no relative of the prime minister) as commander-in-chief. In
contrast to General Bajwa, General Sharif is believed to have favoured deploying
troops in support of Saudi Arabia.

“Yemen was hotly debated within the military. Ultimately the
military feared that there would be a sectarian backlash within the military
itself if it got involved in the Saudi-Iranian proxy war in Yemen,” said
Abdullah Gul, the son of former Islamist ISI chief, Hamid Gul, who maintains
close ties to the command of Pakistan’s armed forces.

Those concerns appear to have been abandoned with the
likelihood of a Pakistani combat brigade being sent to areas of the
Saudi-Yemeni border vulnerable to attack by the anti-Saudi Houthis as well as
jihadi groups. The deployment would not violate the Pakistani parliament
resolution as long as Pakistani troops remain on the Saudi side of the border.

General Sharif may be rewarded for his support of the Saudis
by taking over the command of the Riyadh-based military alliance, dubbed the
Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism.

General Raheel’s appointment would give the alliance credibility
it needs: a non-Arab commander from one of the world’s most populous
Muslim countries who commanded not only one of the Muslim world’s largest
militaries, but also one that possesses nuclear weapons.

Yet, accepting the command risks putting Pakistan more
firmly than ever in the camp of Saudi-led confrontation with Iran that Saudi
political and religious leaders as well as their militant Pakistani allies
often frame not only in geopolitical but also sectarian terms.

Pakistani Shiite leaders as well as some Sunni politicians
have warned that General Raheel’s appointment would put an end to Pakistan’s
ability to walk a fine line between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Pakistan
borders on Iran and is home to the world’s largest Shiite minority.

General Raheel has reportedly told his Saudi counterparts
that he would seek to involve Iran in the alliance. Similarly, General Bajwa
appeared to be hedging his bets by
declaring that “enhanced Pakistan-Iran military-to-military cooperation
will have a positive impact on regional peace and stability.”

Saudi conditions for a reconciliation with Iran appear to
all but rule out any effort by General Raheel and complicate General Bajwa’s
balancing act.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, in a speech last
month’s Munich Security Conference, charged that “Iran remains the biggest
state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Iran has as part of its constitution
the principle of exporting the revolution. Iran does not believe in the
principle of citizenship. It believes that the Shiite, the ‘dispossessed’, as
Iran calls them, all belong to Iran and not to their countries of origin. And this
is unacceptable for us in the kingdom, for our allies in the Gulf and for any
country in the world.”

Mr. Al-Jubeir stipulated that “until and unless Iran changes
its behaviour, and changes its outlook, and changes the principles upon which
the Iranian state is based, it will be very difficult to deal with a country
like this.”

The possible deployment of troops and General Raheel’s
appointment comes as the Pakistani parliament is forging closer relations with
its Iranian counterpart in an effort to nurture economic and political
cooperation.

It also comes in the wake of the deportation
by Saudi Arabia of 39,000 Pakistanis as part of a crackdown on militants
and the arrest and alleged torture of Pakistani transgenders in the kingdom.

Transgenders may not garner significant public empathy in
conservative Pakistan but workers’ rights do, particularly at a time of reduced
remittances. “The government and the military are walking a tightrope that is
dangerously balanced both in terms of domestic as well as in terms of
geopolitics,” said one Pakistani political analyst.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile